Mobile Web Junkie

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been releasing updates to my wordpress plugin. A bug fix here, a new option there. You’ve got configurable menus, support for Cyrillic character sets and much, much more.

But the backlog of new features has been growing and it needed a big update to clear the decks! So yesterday signalled the release of the latest incarnation of my Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress – version 1.5!

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Overcoming the barriers of mobile web design and development – it’s the tagline of our blog and something that we strive towards each and every day.

We’ve given the development community some amazing tools that allow you to create some fantastic mobile sites and we’ve created plugins, components and classes that help you at every step.

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Right now, I feel like the blind man telling my own future.

If the BBC don’t start recognising my Android handset as a mobile browser again, I’ll go elsewhere. I’ve had enough of navigating their full website through my small screen and I want the mobile experience back.

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Building your mobile friendly website is getting easier each day.

We’ve already released plugins and components for a number of different applications – CakePHP, Joomla and WordPress to name a few.

But what happens if you’re not running one of these apps but still need a mobile friendly website? If you don’t have the time or patience to write the mobile tools yourself using WAPL our latest offering might be just what you’ve been looking for!

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IE6 Must Die is a trending topic on Twitter right now. The world is demanding that IE6 support is dropped, effectively forcing the hand of anyone still using the browser and hopefully freeing the internet from the hell that is substandard browser support.

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We received the following comment from Jeff Miller on the ‘removing scrollbars‘ article.

“Your site doesnt even show up on any mobile phone, other than maybe an iphone. But doing a test on your site it show up very bad on other phones which most of the world use. it only scores a 3/5 on ready.mobi and its very hard to navigate on phones. Obviously you are not the mobile web junkie but the wapple (wurfl rip off hosting solution) for iphone junkie.”

Ouch. Oh well, there’s always one… The reply got kinda long but turned out to be quite a good read. So I thought it would be nice to post it as an article. Here it is: Read more

Scrollbars are a pain on web and they are even more of a pain on mobile.

If you’ve ever had to develop a website that does anything imaginative with it’s width then you will have encountered the inclusive / exclusive discrepancy amongst browsers. For example, should your page length exceed the vertical size of a browser window, a vertical scrollbar appears – trouble is some browsers feel the need to subtract the width of the scrollbar from the width of the page – causing horizontal scroll on the page. Read more

The mobile web is a great place for advertising, content, information, social experiences and fulfillment on the go. In fact, what better than the opportunity to connect with users through the device they carry around with them at all times?

Trouble is, developing for mobile browsers is hard if you don’t choose the right tools and technology to help you on the way.

If you’ve ever tried to code for the mobile web in the past (or have been lucky enough to have someone do it for you), you’ll know how hard it’s been to create a mobile site that looks great and provides a great user experience on all mobile devices.

Mobile web development is traditionally very difficult. You are not alone. In this article, I hope to explore some of the troubles encountered and then a really cool mobile publishing solution that will help you develop mobile web sites – your mobile web sites, the way you want them. I’ll also explain how you can do it quickly.

The results will optimize for EVERY mobile browser, perfectly.

Instead of having to worry about a couple of browsers as you would with a desktop browser, you’ve got different screen sizes, firmware, operators, carriers and multiple markup languages to look after – all of which meaning there’s a potential 50,000 devices to support.

That’s a staggering number. If you ever had the problem of making something work in IE6 then multiply that headache by the figure above. It’s brain-splitting to say the least.

There have been tools emerge in the past that have gone some way to helping, but now there is a new service available that has removed all of the problems and barriers to development. It’s called Wapple Architect and by the end of this article you’ll know all about it and how it’s revolutionized the entire web world.

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Fact: People are accessing your website URL on their mobile phone!

The latest stats suggest that 5% of traffic to websites now get hit by mobile browsers, even if you promote a separate URL for mobile web.

What do you want them to see? The actual website that takes 20 minutes to load and scrolls to about 10 times the width and height of the mobile? Not likely. They’ll want to see a mobile specific version, running off that single domain, perfectly optimized to whichever handset they’re using, yes, even if they have an iPhone. Read more

For as long as I can remember, developing for mobile has been an absolute nightmare. To start with, there are thousands of unique handsets on thousands of operators with different browsers, firmware and capabilities. There are hundreds of different screensizes and resolutions to take care of, flash and java issues, CSS support (or lack of it) and markup languages galore. You’re not going to be able to deliver a great user experience if you can’t optimize to each and every one of these 50,000+ combinations across all the billions of handsets in the world.

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